Electoral Fraud May Have Won the Greens a By-Election, and It’s Just the Start

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Electoral fraud may have won the Greens a by-election, and it’s just the start

Our ancient norms and traditions will not survive a sectarian turn

The secret ballot is no Tory creation…it came from the Left: chartists and radicals marched, campaigned and demonstrated to win it and, in pursuit of the cause, were imprisoned, deported and even killed. Men were massacred in Manchester at Peterloo for a right we take for granted today.

How ironic it is that a by-election in Gorton and Denton, only a few miles from the site of the slaughter, saw the secrecy of the ballot flagrantly violated. And that it is a party of the Left – the Greens – which is arousing the most suspicion. Democracy Volunteers, accredited and neutral election observers, report misdemeanours. “Based on our assessment of today’s observations, we have seen the highest levels of family voting at any election in our ten year history of observing elections in the UK,” they said yesterday.

The practice sees voters joined by other people in the polling booth – often a husband joining his wife – in order to influence their vote: it’s a criminal offence. The practice isn’t confined to voters whose origins lie in Pakistan or Bangladesh. But it is scarcely unknown among them, if Democracy Volunteers are to be believed: in 2022, they claimed that some Bangladeshi-origin voters in Tower Hamlets, “generally men”, were inflicting the practice on others, “invariably women”.

An unseemly row has broken out between Manchester council and Democracy Volunteers about whether election officials were or weren’t notified – and whether they reacted if they were. And although the victorious Greens, with their aggressive courting of South Asian-origin support, are an inevitable target of conjecture, it isn’t yet clear which political party is most at fault: Labour fought the by-election energetically, and is no stranger to the darker arts of urban campaigning.

All the same, it is possible to believe, on the basis of the seat’s composition, the course of the election as a whole and yesterday’s turnout, that family voting swung the contest for the Greens – and deprived Reform of a sensational by-election victory. For if family voting warped voting at polling stations, where observers were present, imagine the scale of it in private homes, where there were none.

But whichever party and campaigners are most to blame, this vicious, sectarian by–election – with its leaflets in Urdu, focus on events thousands of miles away, appeals to Muslim solidarity, anti-Indian propaganda, obsession with Zionism and not-so-latent anti-Semitism – is the shape of contests to come. The Gaza independents seized four seats from Labour at the last general election amidst accusations of electoral malpractice all round. Sir Keir Starmer’s Government set up a Defending Democracy Taskforce in the aftermath. Little has been heard of it since. There is a hole where a government anti-extremism strategy should be.

[…]

Any voter in Gorton and Denton can begin a civil court process to declare the election null and void. The balance of the argument is fine. Our democracy won’t flourish if our elections are reflexively litigated, the claimant may not win in any event, and a second by-election might well not produce a different result. But our democracy can’t survive at all if its norms are habitually violated, electoral malpractice shouldn’t be tolerated and what matters most in Gorton and Denton – or anywhere else – is the integrity of the system, not who wins the contest.

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By-election humiliation for Keir Starmer as Labour collapses in former fortress

Hannah Spencer has made history as the first Green Party candidate to win a Westminster by-election. Image: X

Keir Starmer was left reeling last night after Labour suffered a crushing and deeply embarrassing defeat in one of its safest seats, tumbling from a 13,413 majority to third place as the Green Party seized Gorton and Denton in a by-election overshadowed by allegations of cheating.

In a result that will send shockwaves through Westminster, Labour not only lost the Greater Manchester constituency but was pushed behind Reform UK in a seat that had returned Labour MPs for decades.

Hannah Spencer, a 34 year old plumber and Trafford councillor, won 14,980 votes, nearly 41 per cent of the total cast, giving her a majority of 4,402. Reform’s Matthew Goodwin secured 10,578 votes, while Labour candidate Angeliki Stogia slumped to 9,364, just 25.4 per cent, down from 50.8 per cent at the 2024 general election.

For Sir Keir, who had personally visited the constituency days before polling and framed the contest as a battle “for the soul of the nation”, the outcome is nothing short of a humiliation.

The scale of the collapse will fuel mounting Tory claims that the Prime Minister has “killed the Labour Party” and strengthen whispers among Labour MPs that his days in Downing Street may be numbered, particularly if May’s local elections deliver another drubbing.

The night was further marred by explosive claims of voting irregularities. Democracy Volunteers said it witnessed “concerningly high levels of family voting” across the constituency, an illegal practice in which relatives influence or direct how others cast their ballots.

The group attended 22 of the 45 polling stations, spending up to 45 minutes in each, and said it observed family voting in 15 of them, an astonishing proportion. The organisation is led by Dr John Ault, a former Liberal Democrat politician who has monitored elections in Britain and abroad.

Nigel Farage said the allegations “raises serious questions about the integrity of the democratic process in predominantly Muslim areas”. After the result he went further, declaring the “election was a victory for sectarian voting and cheating”.

Mr Goodwin said Reform had “embarrassed Labour in one of their strongest seats” and claimed he was defeated by a “coalition of Islamists and woke progressives” who had come together to “dominate the constituency”.

Warning of what he described as a “dangerous Muslim sectarianism”, he said: “We are losing our country.”

“We have only one general election left to save Britain. Vote Reform every chance you get,” he added.

The Greens ran a highly targeted campaign in the constituency, which has a substantial Muslim population. Leaflets featured Ms Spencer wearing a keffiyeh scarf in front of a mosque, alongside material in Urdu urging voters to “punish Labour for Gaza”. A video circulated in Urdu warned that a Reform victory would “fuel the flames of Islamophobia”, prompting Mr Goodwin to accuse the party of peddling “blatant sectarianism”.

Labour’s woes were compounded by internal strife. The party’s ruling National Executive Committee barred Andy Burnham, the popular Greater Manchester mayor, from standing in the seat, despite polling suggesting he could have held it. Allies of Mr Burnham suggested the decision exposed fear within Sir Keir’s camp about allowing a potential leadership rival back into Westminster.

Sir Keir’s stance on Gaza, his personal unpopularity and anger over the blocking of Mr Burnham are all expected to be blamed for the swing away from Labour in what should have been a routine defence.

Labour was also accused of dirty tricks on the eve of polling after circulating a leaflet apparently carrying the endorsement of a tactical voting group which read: “The Tactical Choice says Vote Labour.” In a letter to deputy leader Lucy Powell, Green Party leader Zack Polanski accused Labour of “openly lying to voters” and demanded an apology.

Despite the scale of the defeat, Labour Party chair Anna Turley insisted: “By-elections are normally difficult for the party of government, and this election was no different.”

She added: “We have had thousands of conversations over the last few weeks and we know the majority of voters here did not want the poisonous politics of Nigel Farage and Reform.

“The politics of anger and easy answers offered by the Greens and Reform won’t deliver this.”

A Conservative spokesman was far less restrained, saying Sir Keir had “killed the Labour Party”.

“In losing one of Labour’s safest seats, in a constituency that has returned Labour MPs for almost a century, Starmer has shown he no longer commands the support of Labour voters and is now a lame duck leader,” the spokesman said.

“This result shows the Labour government now lacks any support in the country and has no mandate for the terrible policies it is pursuing, increasing the benefits bill, raising taxes, weakening our borders and the armed forces.”

In her victory speech, Ms Spencer struck a defiant tone, criticising “politicians and divisive figures who constantly scapegoat and blame our communities for all the problems in society”.

She said Britain was being “bled dry” by billionaires and declared: “People in their thousands told me on the doorsteps and at the ballot box that what we are sick of is being let down and looked down on, that we are sick of our hard work making other people rich.”

She also told supporters: “I didn’t grow up wanting to be a politician. I am a plumber. I am no different to every single person here in this constituency. I work hard. That is what we do,” before apologising to customers because she was “heading to Parliament”.

The Greens’ victory, their first in a Westminster by-election and their first MP in northern England, will be hailed by activists as proof they can outflank Labour on the Left. For Sir Keir, it is a stark warning that voters on both sides of the political divide are deserting him.

With senior aides already forced out in recent weeks and backbench unease growing, the loss of Gorton and Denton may prove more than a mid term protest. It could mark the moment the Prime Minister’s authority began to ebb away in earnest, amid bitter claims that the contest itself was tainted by “sectarian voting and cheating”.